So ...assuming AIs get to "choose" a body and Bubbles appears to be a MILspec super duty fighting/military chassis that (assumedly) she got when she became a solider do we further assume they get to keep whatever hardware they had from the last job they performed? You'd think the military might want that specialized hardware chassis back for re-use or just might not want it wandering around the civilian landscape. They did take back Pintsize's death ray.

I don't have time to hunt through the archives right now, but I think Bubbles implied at some point that the military let her keep the assault chassis in return for her continued silence about any mismanagement of the program and in lieu of any actual therapy for her PTSD. Which is a pretty cruddy consolation prize if you ask me. I don't get the feeling that the military would be in the habit of letting retired AI soldiers keep all kinds of milspec gear. Although there was the one clerkbot Marigold and Momo met at the chassis store that claimed she still had the launch codes for the nuclear submarine she used to be.... not sure if she's a credible witness though.

Welcome, new person!

Another speculation is that it's like being allowed to keep your uniform when you muster out, an idea with the obvious weakness that any chassis which makes it possible to explode craters in brick walls is a weapon rather than a garment.

Maybe, but I'd kind of assumed they were just using "they" because they were talking so abstractly.

They could be, but...it just seems like in panel 2, Basilisk is talking very directly about Beepatrice. It could also mean that the comments in the corners of thesecomics refer to Beepatrice specifically, which I actually think would make more sense. Since they could both be using the plural "they," though, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

New Strip UpThere is so much of the cute in this strip that I'm not sure where to start. I think that the thing that really stands out for me is the fact that, in panel 4, Faye is gushing about her girlfriend. This is so sugary and sweet that I'm almost ready to burst! Roko is responding in a similar way that makes me wonder whether Jeph is giving us a clue as to in which direction her preferences may lie (whether or not she is fully aware of it yet) or if she's just a romantic under the gruff personality, much like Bubbles herself.

Poor Bubbles though! It must be hard after so long of walling herself off emotionally to have friends, let alone a woman who has fallen in love with her and is always willing to describe the experience (and who she herself is when not out in the public eye)!

Roko is responding in a similar way that makes me wonder whether Jeph is giving us a clue as to in which direction her preferences may lie (whether or not she is fully aware of it yet) or if she's just a romantic under the gruff personality, much like Bubbles herself.

If her preferences lay in that direction, her first tea induced vision would not have looked like this.

New Commic Up!I find myself genuinely wondering how long ago it was that Dora realised that her destiny was to be surrounded by rumbustious high school girls in the bodies of adult women? That said, if Faye wasn't all rough-and-tumble and dragging everyone else into it, she would question if she was actually dreaming!

Over on Patreon, some have chosen to view this incident as a shippy hint. I, for one, can't see that interpretation. We're just seeing Faye being Faye. In essence, it's just play.

One possibility: Roko has some savings and she gets Faye and Bubbles to fit her with milspec derma, because she wants skin as sensitive and capable as Bubbles has. This opens up the exploration of how synthetics, who can have extensive hardware changes that are fairly non-traumatic in nature, view major body modifications.

I maintain that Faye's behaviour here is a sort of friendship version cross between marking her territory and a mating display, much like when Faye grabbed Martin's nipple back in #13. It is too late for you Roko. You're being inducted into The Circle.

I haven't read or watched Azumanga Daioh for ages - I must rectify that.

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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."(from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"(from: The Eccentric Family )

So is this Faye treating Roko like a new *friend* for no apparent reason?

Or is this another example of Faye's baffling 'impersonalisation' of AIs??

(Faaacceee meeaaattts!!!)

I read this more as Faye's perspective as an engineer getting in the way of her (somewhat limited) interpersonal skills. It seems like she considers AI's bodies/chassis as "things" and their minds/intelligences "people." It's likely driven by exactly how much she knows at this point about the inner workings of said chassis. It seems similar to a surgeon's cavalier attitude toward discussing squicky topics regarding the human body, or any professional's tendency to lose any sense of awe regarding their profession. I'm not sure if it's defensive (if she thought of AI's bodies as an extension of their person-hood, her job would seem much more harrowing) or simply apathy, but I don't believe she thinks it's impersonal to discuss or interact with AI forms in that way.

That said, consent is important, and she's violating all kinds of consent in the last couple strips. I think introducing Roko, a character who we've seen is highly attached to her chassis and considers it as much a part of her as her matrix, to the group will be an important step for Faye to realize that she's being an ass about this sort of thing, and maybe she'll develop a bedside manner.

So is this Faye treating Roko like a new *friend* for no apparent reason?

Or is this another example of Faye's baffling 'impersonalisation' of AIs??

(Faaacceee meeaaattts!!!)

That said, consent is important, and she's violating all kinds of consent in the last couple strips. I think introducing Roko, a character who we've seen is highly attached to her chassis and considers it as much a part of her as her matrix, to the group will be an important step for Faye to realize that she's being an ass about this sort of thing, and maybe she'll develop a bedside manner.

Giving Faye's history of punching first then not bothering to ask questions, this seams unlikely. She is as she is.

So is this Faye treating Roko like a new *friend* for no apparent reason?

Or is this another example of Faye's baffling 'impersonalisation' of AIs??

(Faaacceee meeaaattts!!!)

That said, consent is important, and she's violating all kinds of consent in the last couple strips. I think introducing Roko, a character who we've seen is highly attached to her chassis and considers it as much a part of her as her matrix, to the group will be an important step for Faye to realize that she's being an ass about this sort of thing, and maybe she'll develop a bedside manner.

Giving Faye's history of punching first then not bothering to ask questions, this seams unlikely. She is as she is.

That's fair, though I feel like we've seen a decent amount of growth in her character (at least enough that I can still hope)

So is this Faye treating Roko like a new *friend* for no apparent reason?

Or is this another example of Faye's baffling 'impersonalisation' of AIs??

(Faaacceee meeaaattts!!!)

That said, consent is important, and she's violating all kinds of consent in the last couple strips. I think introducing Roko, a character who we've seen is highly attached to her chassis and considers it as much a part of her as her matrix, to the group will be an important step for Faye to realize that she's being an ass about this sort of thing, and maybe she'll develop a bedside manner.

Giving Faye's history of punching first then not bothering to ask questions, this seams unlikely. She is as she is.

That's probably the last punch she really delivered. I believe somewhat later, she starts a punch, when she realises her usual threats of violence don't work on Bubbles, and so, doesn't land it.

The last time she held back on a punch was probably when she went to Marten to talk about her feelings for Bubbles, in #3735

Edit: The last time she delivered a punch crossing boundaries with friends was much longer time ago I think, probably before her hospitalization even(?) I'm not counting the punch of corpsewitch here, as that was a decidedly different situation then discussed above.

My first thought, reading this page, is that I was getting a strong Azumanga Daioh vibe, and then I read the footer. Anyway, I enjoyed the silliness here, it was amusing, and good to see Roko letting herself relax a bit, although I imagine any other customers watching this would have some questions about what was going on.

So are Momo's pigtails detachable, or is that only in one of Emily's weird daydreams?

Yes. Specifically they are detachable within a radius of thirty feet from Emily and it’s probably best not to think too hard about why.

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"I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." - Charles Babbage

So ...assuming AIs get to "choose" a body and Bubbles appears to be a MILspec super duty fighting/military chassis that (assumedly) she got when she became a solider do we further assume they get to keep whatever hardware they had from the last job they performed? You'd think the military might want that specialized hardware chassis back for re-use or just might not want it wandering around the civilian landscape. They did take back Pintsize's death ray.

My head canon is that, for entirely reasonable reasons, Bubbles’s chassis was more or less built around her once she enlisted and that even if she can move into another body, no other AI would be able to safely operate hers. Further, it might be configured such that leaving is also impractical–she is probably pre-core at least (the protected AI drives seem to be a recent innovation) and may Not have the right connections. As such, once the programme was shut down, it makes sense that “we can’t remove her easily, we can’t kill her, mothball storage is expensive, and we’ll be like five hardware generations more advanced next time we try anyway, might as well just let her walk out” won the argument.

Much like the phrase “never attribute to malice where stupidity will suffice” there is a lesser-known companion: “never attribute to generosity where laziness will suffice” that frequently applies to militaries everywhere.

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"I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." - Charles Babbage

So ...assuming AIs get to "choose" a body and Bubbles appears to be a MILspec super duty fighting/military chassis that (assumedly) she got when she became a solider do we further assume they get to keep whatever hardware they had from the last job they performed? You'd think the military might want that specialized hardware chassis back for re-use or just might not want it wandering around the civilian landscape. They did take back Pintsize's death ray.

My head canon is that, for entirely reasonable reasons, Bubbles’s chassis was more or less built around her once she enlisted and that even if she can move into another body, no other AI would be able to safely operate hers. Further, it might be configured such that leaving is also impractical–she is probably pre-core at least (the protected AI drives seem to be a recent innovation) and may Not have the right connections. As such, once the programme was shut down, it makes sense that “we can’t remove her easily, we can’t kill her, mothball storage is expensive, and we’ll be like five hardware generations more advanced next time we try anyway, might as well just let her walk out” won the argument.

Much like the phrase “never attribute to malice where stupidity will suffice” there is a lesser-known companion: “never attribute to generosity where laziness will suffice” that frequently applies to militaries everywhere.

Or her chassis is intentionally designed to be hard to access once an AI has uploaded into it, in order to minimize vulnerabilities against enemy takeover, or intelligence gathering should she be captured.

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"Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter" - Rosa Luxemburg"The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you're a member of the Dunning-Kruger club. People miss that." - David Dunning

Or the more simple way... There was no reason not to let her keep the body. Since the AI soldier program was shut down they had no use for it. Giving her a new body would have been an additional expense. She apparently has no built in weapons, she's just stronger and tougher than most humans, but not beyond other AI bodies we've seen walking around. So she can punch hard enough to chip part of a brick wall. I've known humans who are strong enough to do that. She couldn't hurt anyone any worse than a trained martial artist could, yet there was no call for Bruce Lee to surrender his body or anything similar.

Or the more simple way... There was no reason not to let her keep the body. Since the AI soldier program was shut down they had no use for it. Giving her a new body would have been an additional expense. She apparently has no built in weapons, she's just stronger and tougher than most humans, but not beyond other AI bodies we've seen walking around. So she can punch hard enough to chip part of a brick wall. I've known humans who are strong enough to do that. She couldn't hurt anyone any worse than a trained martial artist could, yet there was no call for Bruce Lee to surrender his body or anything similar.

Simple, concise, well-reasoned ... what the Hell do you think you're doing posting this in the WCDT?

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"Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter" - Rosa Luxemburg"The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you're a member of the Dunning-Kruger club. People miss that." - David Dunning